through a hedge, backwards
by takingoffmyshoes
Summary: A bullet that doesn't kill you is still a bullet. (Set after the season 1 finale)


_(still belatedly filling prompts from last year's h/c bingo because it's not like i have self-respect anyway)_

* * *

...

* * *

It takes his breath away when it hits, hot pain and powerful impact turning his vision watery and slowing time to a crawl. For long, swaying moments, his head is too heavy to lift, and all he can do is stare down at the blood trickling from his fingertips. Then Danny gets hit and it slams him back into himself because _fuck_ , Danny wasn't supposed to die, not for real. It's all wrong, all of it, and he'd got so close to fixing it but wasn't supposed to happen like this, and he'll be damned if the bastard strips another good man from his side. The rage leaves him too cold to feel, too empty to care as he raises his own gun and puts an end to Billy Kimber.

It's not until later that the pain hits, when he's shirtless in the kitchen with his brothers holding him still against the digging forceps. "Take it!" Arthur yells, and he bites back another tight-throated cry. "Take it, Tommy, come on." He's sweating and shaking and for fuck's sake just get it _out_ already, because the search is only widening the wound and shearing against nerves already too raw to bear.

Then it's out, and Arthur's hand is firm around the back of his neck, helping him take an unsteady gulp of whiskey. "Deep breath," Arthur tells him, and then the mouth of the bottle is shoved unceremoniously against the ragged tear in his chest and the searing contents poured into it. He can't keep back a yell at that, because it fucking _burns_ , but it's all right because once the burn fades, that'll be the last of it. It was a shallow shot, nestled in the muscle, and missed everything important.

The bandages are more a precaution than anything else, and by the time he makes it to Grace's flat, he can hardly feel a thing.

* * *

The next morning, she's gone. He still doesn't feel a thing.

* * *

The morning after that, he wakes up with heat smoldering under his skin and cold settled deep in his bones. It's almost too much effort to reach down and pull up the blankets bunched at the foot of the bed, but he manages, and curls as deeply into them as he can to wait out the stars in his vision and the pounding throbs of his shoulder.

 _Fever_ , he thinks dully, but it's not important enough to stop him from giving in to the heavy pull of sleep.

 _Fever_ , his mind says again, but it's not important at all.

Time passes, or doesn't, until footsteps on the stairs seem to shake the very room. It's enough to wake him up, but only partly, and only barely. The room is brighter, and his skin feels damp and slick and raw. "Thomas Shelby," comes the sharp, irritable voice, growing more piercingly loud as it approaches, "it's almost noon and you're as bad as Ada, I swear to— Oh, my god."

There are cold fingers on his face, then, pressing against his forehead and cheek, and the scent of her is something he's long associated with _home_ and _safe_ but also with _obey_ and _impress_.

"Polly," he realises, and tries to push himself up on a shaking arm. He can barely get his eyes open; sitting up is out of the question, but for her, he'll try.

"Don't, Thomas," she says firmly, but her voice is much softer now and her hand is heavy on his good shoulder. "Lie back, that's it."

"Fever," he mutters, as he slumps gracelessly against the pillow and his shoulder aches in protest. "I think it's..."

"I know." She's undoing the bandages now, careful fingers still too rough against his overheated skin. "Let's have a look." He can't help but relax under her touch. Whatever it is, she'll fix it – she won't let him down, won't leave him behind, won't let him fester in the dark and the mud, won't—

" _Thomas."_

He startles, but it's a slow, languid thing. "What?"

"The boys cleaned it, didn't they? When they took out the bullet?"

"Hmm? Oh. Yes. Whiskey. Arthur said..." _take a breath,_ hadn't said that it would burn like the devil, but he didn't have to because...

Because...

He blinks, and Polly's sitting on the edge of the bed, wiping his face with a cloth as cold as winter. His shoulder feels raw and fiery, and when he glances down at it there's a thick poultice smeared on the skin, staining the gauze laid lightly over it and eating into him like acid.

"Garlic and thyme," Polly says. "It's the best we have right now but it should do the trick."

"Garlic?" That's just cruel. "What happened to honey?"

Polly snorts. "I'm not wasting honey on you, boy. You're too lovesick and short-sighted to clean your own wound, you get garlic and you'll be grateful." There's no real rancor in the words, though, and she doesn't stop pressing the cold water against his skin.

His mind is clearer now, but he's heavy and exhausted with the sodden weight of the heat pressing down on him and the convulsive shivers he still can't fight.

"How long?" he croaks.

"I could ask you the same."

"Polly. How long was I out."

"It's early afternoon," Polly admits. "You didn't lose too much time." The cloth moves down to his neck, and he shivers at the sensation, a shallow frisson nothing like the hard shudders that shake the bed.

"How do you feel?" Polly asks.

"Like someone put garlic in my gunshot."

"I wouldn't have had to if you'd taken care of it yourself," she retorts, "or better yet, not gotten yourself shot in the first place."

He's suddenly very, very tired.

"Danny's dead," he says heavily. "Grace is gone. Freddy thinks I got him locked up. What else have we lost?"

"Perspective, apparently."

"I'm serious, Polly." If he cared to sit and count his losses, he could do so very easily, and most of them within the last few days. How had it all gone so spectacularly wrong?

Polly snorts. "And you think I'm not? You were shot in the fucking _chest_ , Thomas. It's a miracle you're not already in the ground, and there's no need to borrow trouble to make up for it. I'm just happy you're alive, and you should be, too." The words are curt, but her motions are still calm and soothing, and he's vividly reminded of his childhood, and the occasional illness spent under her care. She treated him much the same then, berating him with her voice but always gentle with her hands.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, and those gentle hands go still. "I try, for the family, but..." But somehow, he only causes them more pain.

Perhaps he's the cause of all his losses. Perhaps he always has been.

"Oh, Thomas," Polly sighs, and the cloth's back on his face, dabbing at his eyes. He hadn't realised he was crying.

"Danny's dead," he says again, and this time it hurts. He'll never see him again, except in his nightmares, and he'll spend the rest of his life waking up and remembering.

"I know."

"I got him killed."

"He knew it would be dangerous."

"That doesn't make it better."

"No, maybe not. But it doesn't make it worse, and sometimes that's all you can ask for."

* * *

He shivers through the day, so cold it hurts, even under the extra quilts Polly brings up and spreads over him. His brothers are nowhere to be seen, but that's fairly standard. They're not the type, after all. He drifts in and out of sleep, and sometimes Polly is there, and sometimes she's not, but when she asks if he wants her to stay with him that night he reads the reluctance in her stony eyes, shakes his head, and sends her on her way.

It's not like he's never been sick before. It's not like he's never been cold.

* * *

At some point in the night, cold turns to heat, and he wakes up burning and smothered and soaking in sweat. It's so hot he can hardly breathe, and his heart is pounding fit to tear its way out of his chest. It'd go through the bullet wound, probably, feels like it already might be trying to as it throbs in time with his rabbiting pulse.

He tries to push back the covers, but the layers are heavy and he's so fucking tired and the effort makes his head spin as he tries to fill his lungs.

Water. That's what he needs. There's water on the table by the bed, Polly left it for him, all he has to do is reach it. He lifts an arm, and suddenly the glass is shattering and there's water on the floor and he hadn't even touched it, had he? Hadn't even felt the cold of the glass against his fingers. He lets his arm drop, and pants for breath as the bed beneath him dips and sways.

Why is he on a fucking boat?

No, he's not, he's...

Pounding feet, and the door bursts open. "Tommy?"

"Polly," he rasps, even though he knows it's wrong, knows it's not her voice, it's—

"No, Tommy, it's me. It's Arthur. Jesus." A rough hand presses against his forehead, and a coarse voice curses.

"Help," is all he can say. "Help me."

"Help you with what, Tommy? What d'you need?"

"Hot." God, even his tongue is heavy. Is he even making sense? Everything rebounds in his head, echoing dully until he doesn't know what he's saying and what's already been said.

"Yeah, you fucking are _ng are ng are ng are_ let's get these blankets off _off off_ y _off_ eah _ah ah ah?"_

Stale sweat prickles on his forehead and another wave of heat wells up from his skin. He groans, dizzy even in the darkness.

The blankets are pulled back, but it's not enough.

"Tommy." Someone's shaking his shoulder, but his muscles are heavy and limp and his head just lolls on the pillow, back and forth and back and forth and back and—

"Come on, Tommy, don't make me go get Polly." Is that fear?

He forces his eyes open, sees a blurred face through sweaty lashes. Arthur.

"Yeah, good, it's me. You finally recognise your own fucking brother, that's something." But there's worry under the irritation, concern that swells and pounds and echoes in thick pulses of _brother, brother, brother_ and he loses himself on the waves of it as Arthur's face slides in and out of a humid haze.

"Arthur—"

"Shh, don't talk. Just let me—"

Another hand under his head, tilting it up, and the starry sky reels overhead. "Did you know—"

"Shut up," Arthur says. It is Arthur, isn't it? "Open." A thin trickle of water finds its way in, and he swallows on the second try, losing some down his chest in the attempt. Arthur swears again and takes the cup away. (Didn't it break? What's—) "Fucking hell, Tommy, I _am_ gonna have to get Polly. Stay here, all right? Don't try anything stupid, just stay right here."

Footsteps again, voices, doors, it's all too fucking much when all he wanted was some fucking water. Isn't there a glass of it on the table? He turns his head to look just as the door opens again and locks eyes with Polly.

"Jesus _fucking_ Christ," she hisses, then she's at his side, leaning over him, hair reaching down in its dark braid and then she divides into three and starts to run like water down a windowpane and he has to close his eyes. "Thomas," she says. "Thomas, can you hear me?" He chokes on a groan, and she takes it as an answer.

"John, fill the tub. Not cold, mind, just cool. Arthur, help me with him."

Hands clamp around his arms and pull him up to sitting and the room spins so viciously he almost retches. He's so fucking hot, don't they know that? He's fucking melting, isn't he, too heavy to hold himself up. He slumps forward, only stopped by hands against his shoulders. Someone else pulls his legs around so he's sitting on the edge of the bed, then he's a tangle of hands and arms and shoulders and they pull him up and he goes right back down, legs loose and liquid and not entirely attached. There's staggering and cursing, almost drowned out by the pounding of his heart and in his head, and the hands and arms snake around his waist, too, and pull him up again.

"Lean on me, Tommy, that's it," says someone, says Arthur, and Tommy lists towards the voice, comes up against a warm, solid mass and he's just so _hot_. "Yeah, I know, we're working on it. Come on now, let's go."

They start moving, but he's too dizzy to keep track and lets his head hang down against his chest – Arthur's chest, that is, he thinks.

There's a rushing, thundering noise getting closer. Is it in his head? No, he can still hear his heartbeat just fine. Something else, then.

"That's enough, John. Turn it off and come help us."

The thundering stops, and the wood under his bare feet turns to tile and some bright light reddens the insides of his eyelids, and there are more hands on him, where'd they fucking _come_ from—

"What about his—"

"Leave them, they'll go in with him."

"What's going—

"Finn! No, go back to bed, we don't need any more—"

His legs give out again, and it's a scramble of hands and voices to keep him from hitting the floor but they must not reach him in time because his vision greys out and his head is filled with high-pitched ringing and then everything is black.

* * *

There's snatches, after that, but no more. Cold water, muddled voices, endless indistinguishable dreams, and a sharp, searing pain that brings him close enough to the surface to recognize Arthur and John pinning him down as something digs into his chest. He gets one sharp image, a clear impression of the fierce concentration on Arthur's face beneath his flop of dark hair, and then he's gone again.

* * *

The next time he's awake, he spends a few weightless seconds wondering if he'd dreamed it all, but no. Polly's sitting on the edge of his bed and pressing a wet cloth to his smouldering skin, but there are tight lines around her mouth and heavy shadows under her eyes that weren't there before. She looks exhausted. It's been some time, then.

He means to ask her how long, or what happened, or whatever other inane questions sick men always seem to ask, but he falls asleep again before he can find the words.

* * *

There's a hand in his hair, stroking it back. He can feel the sweat in it, the slickness of his skin.

"All right, Tommy, enough is enough. It's time to wake up now, come on."

He tries, but he doesn't know how. He slips away on a sigh.

* * *

He opens his eyes to find another pair staring back at him, small and blue and oddly solemn.

"Hello, Finn," he rasps. "What fucking day is it?"

Finn just shrugs.

"Fair enough," he says, eyes drifting shut. "I dunno either."

* * *

When he finally wakes up lucid, it's to a bloody shouting match. He never finds out what it's about, because when he tells them to shut the fuck up and let him sleep, they actually fucking listen.

Well, they shut the fuck up, but they don't let him sleep. Polly shoves everyone else out, but then turns on him. She still looks exhausted, even under what might be relief, and instead of tearing into him like he'd expected she just drops into the chair pulled up by his bed and pulls out a cigarette. "Thomas Shelby," she pronounces, "you've taken a good ten years off my life."

"Sepsis?"

She flicks her lighter open and applies it. "Near enough."

"How long?"

"Since you got sick? Five days." She sucks on the cigarette with nothing like her usual elegance, pulling in a huge draught and savoring it for a long moment before sitting back to exhale it towards the ceiling. "You had a fit," she adds shortly, watching the smoke, "that first night. First night it was bad, anyway. That took off five years all by itself."

"Did I hurt anyone?"

"No. Not even yourself, thank God. Worried us sick, of course, but that's not what you're asking."

"When did the surgeon come?"

"As soon as he could. Four days ago, if you want it that way."

"Pol, look at me." She does, even though the defiance can't quite hide the fear behind it, nor the anger at the fear. "I'm all right now, aren't I?"

"You nearly weren't," she snaps. "That fever was almost high enough to kill you, do you understand? If Arthur hadn't found you when he did, we could have woken up the next morning to find you _dead_ , you fool, because _you told me you'd be all right."_

Ah, that's it, then.

"I didn't lie to you, Polly. All right? I didn't lie. I just didn't know, and you couldn't have, either."

"I should have stayed with you. I knew you were sick, knew it would have to get worse before it got better, and I still left you alone. You're damned lucky, you know."

"I broke a glass," he remembers. Shattered glass and water spilling out over the floorboards.

"On purpose?" she asks drily.

"We can pretend, can't we?"

"No."

"No?"

"Not even you can save yourself from everything, Thomas. Sometimes even you need luck."

He thinks of Danny, twice dead, and himself, who should be at least once by now. _May you be in heaven a full half-hour..._

Perhaps she has a point.

* * *

It's another few days in bed – sleeping, mostly, and aching, some – with Polly checking the dressing on his shoulder twice a day and his temperature a hell of a lot more often than that. Any other time, it would annoy him, but right now such irritation just seems horribly ungrateful.

He's never been one to yearn for death – at least, no more so than anyone else who'd been through the rotting, choking hell of war – but in the days that follow, he finds himself thinking more and more that he deserves it.

Good men die all the time, and he's no better than any of them. So why is it that he's still here, eh? Why is it that he survived the trenches when others didn't? Why is it that he survived the tunnels? Why is it that he survived one bullet from a gun that killed with the next?

And if he's to be alive, if he's to survive against all odds, then why does so much get taken from him? Why are the ones who die the ones he cares about, the ones he needs? Why are the ones who leave the ones he loves, the ones he'd hoped could be the key to a better, brighter life?

He's got the devil's own luck, but for fucking _what?_

Polly's the one to pull him out of it, which probably means he'll lose her next. He's been well enough to be out of bed the past few days, but he hasn't fucking cared to be. Today she doesn't give him a choice. She opens the door without knocking or asking, and strides across the room, yanking open the curtains and bringing the daylight spilling in. She has a bundle of something over one arm, which she drops on the foot of his bed. It's his coat.

"Come on," she says shortly. "Get up. We're going for a walk."

"Oh?" He closes his eyes. "I think not."

"When I want your opinion, Thomas, I'll give it to you. Up. Now."

"I'm tired, Pol. Let me sleep."

"Let you stare out at nothing and send yourself mad with the thoughts in your head, you mean. I know what you're doing, and the sooner you stop, the better you'll feel."

There's nothing to say to that, so he rolls over, putting his back to her.

She grabs his shoulder and yanks him back. "Thomas Shelby," she says, eyes like flint and voice no softer, "you _will_ get out of bed and you _will_ come for a walk with me, even if I have to drag you along the ground the entire way."

She'd actually do it, too, and that sounds even more awful than walking (at least for the time being), so he pushes himself up with a sigh. His shoulder barely even aches.

"Did you bring clothes along with the coat?"

"Does it look like I did?"

He stares at her. "I'm not going out like this." He's in pajamas, for fuck's sake.

She stares back. "Then I guess you're going to have to stand up and find some, aren't you?"

He curses, and staggers to his feet. He's been in bed for two weeks, more than half of that seriously ill, and he feels it in every graceless step, but he makes it to the wardrobe on the other side of the room and pulls out a shirt and a waistcoat and trousers and suspenders, then heads back to the bed to struggle into them.

He's winded by the end, and fuck, maybe it would be easier to let Polly drag him, but his head feels a bit clearer.

"I don't need a coat," he says when Polly picks it up.

"It's chilly today, and you've been sick. Wear it."

He does.

The stairs are tricky – his balance is bad, and his knees are stiffer than they ought to be in someone his age – but by the time they make it outside he's moving under his own power, and the combination of sunlight and cool air chases away some more of the fog.

"Where are we going?" he asks.

"Nowhere in particular."

"Stables, then."

"A bit far for someone in your state," she says bluntly, and he feels a smile twitching at his lips for the first time in weeks.

"Don't worry – you can always drag me back."

* * *

...

* * *

 _If you follow me on tumblr, you'll know that I said I was taking a bit of a break from posting fic. I am, but posting this was something by way of an experiment._

 _Some quick notes:_

 _1\. Title comes from a phrase commonly used in my family; "you look like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards" is a quasi-affectionate way of saying you look like complete shit._

 _2\. If someone starts to pass out, don't try to hold them upright - that can actually send them into a seizure, as demonstrated here. If someone loses consciousness, even partially, it's important to get them horizontal as quickly as you safely can so that their blood pressure can stabilize._

 _3\. I find it absolutely fucking ridiculous that Tommy got shot in the chest and was_ totally fine _and then_ _Danny got shot in the chest and fucking_ died instantly. _That's just lazy writing, and I demand compensation in heavy angst. Since the show writers apparently have no intentions of providing me with that, I provided it for myself._

 _Thank you for reading! As always, any thoughts or feedback you'd like to share are very welcome._


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